December 2004
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At Säve airport, the Swedish airforce built a bunker system, In 1999 a foundation with the goal to preserve this bunkersystem started, the goal for the foundation was to bring the historic aviation to life and the coming site will be named Aeroseum.
Me and my grandfather, (who actually spent much time of his early days down in this bunker system as an aircraft mechanic) went to Aeroseum in Late december 2004 to take a look of how it could come out when the project is ready.
The reason to build hangars many metres down in the mountain was because it was a safe way to hide and to escape from bombs etc.
At first, Säve Airfield had one bunkersystem for hangars, but during the cold war another one was built deeper and stronger as the Nuclear threat increased.
Its an cold December evening as we arrive to the old military area of Säve.We take our own car trough the airport area and stops right outside one of the tunnels that leads down to the hangars, here the guided tour will begin.
As my grandfather is a former mechanic I choose to listen to his version instead of the guides as we descent trough the tunnel a little bit after the rest of the group.
First stop is the guard position were all mechanics,pilots and other staff had to report before entering the main hangars.
Behind that little guard office is the large diesel engines that in a imergency was used to give the ficilities electric power.
Aeroseum has plenty of years left before they can be what they are talking about, what about scrapping these wrecks and update their display fleet a little bit?.Our group approaches the former majestetic fighter and everybody who wants can try to sit in the cockpit and feel/imagine how the pilot felt when he increased the throttle on the runway ready for another mission.
I put myself in the cockpit but got very sad when I notice that the cockpit is far from complete as many of the instruments are missing, the seat consists of some old fabric.
Anyway a nice experience to take the seat as a fighter pilot..
We continue walking through the hangar, the hangar is built up from a main tunnel with fingers, three on each side.
In another finger we find different of helicopter wrecks in quite bad condition, together with old missiles and tanks, it really looked like a storage, but still nice to see the former helicopters.
We continue to the finger where Aeroseums café is located, here differents of small aircrafts are on display, among them the Saab Safir that spent lots of time hanging in the roof at the Landvetter international terminal, now its being reserved and by this time it has returned to the skies!
After looking at the small aircraft for some minutes the group starts to move, we follows a tight corridor and ends up in the command central.
Now things becomes really interesting, I´m suddenly standing in the military command central with maps covering both Säve and Landvetter, from here the air traffic controllers could take controll of both of the airports and guide their aircrafts down to a safe landing if any emergency or attack would occur.
After taking a quick look around after the tour finished me and my grandfather is ready to hit the road again and return home.
I´m very interested and I will for sure return with expectations that Aeroseum will stand up with it´s aims.
One thing is for sure, they have a really really long way to go.
Johan Junemo